Tees Valley Writers

Andy Willoughby

Andy Willoughby is a poet and playwright from Eston in Middlesbrough, who runs Ek Zuban with Bob Beagrie. He was Middlesbrough's poet laureate for 2003-04, resulting in the Mudfog pamphlet The Wrong California. His full collection of poems, Tough (Smokestack) came out in July 2005. He is also published in Oral - An Anthology of British Performance Poetry (Sceptre 1999) and The Flesh of the Bear - Poetry from North East England and South West Finland (Ek Zuban 2004) Andy attended The University of Kent at Canterbury, where he was awarded a first in English and American literature and also the university's TS Eliot Prize for poetry and a WB Yeats scholarship to attend summer school and workshops with Seamus Heaney in Sligo. He went on to Sheffield University to complete an MA in film and theatre. Andy has travelled and performed around the world, often in collaboration with musicians, lectured in literature, theatre, media and film at various universities and colleges and worked on numerous community and schools projects as a poet, playwright and director.